Writing
Choose
m3ter
Rebecca Kaden – Feb 7, 2022
A core piece of USV’s thesis has long been around an enablement layer – the idea that horizontal tooling is essential to support growing ecosystems that sit on top. That belief has led to investments like Twilio, Shippo, Sift, Clarifai, [...] Read more
Simulmedia
Brad Burnham – Jun 12, 2019
Those of you who have followed our history may remember that it was a shared angel investment in Dave Morgan’s pioneering Internet advertising company, TACODA, that led to the formation of Union Square Ventures, so we are doubly pleased to [...] Read more
Flip
Andy Weissman – Jun 27, 2017
A Google search for “apartment lease” returns 86 million results. Which makes sense. One of the constants in life is finding a place to live, and signing a long-term contract for that living place. That constant — that lease — remains in force even though changes in our lives may not line up neatly with that one- or two-year period. Many things happen to us while we are stuck with a long-term house or apartment lease: new job opportunities, new roommates or relationships, new family members, and so much more. Read more
Top Hat
Albert Wenger – Feb 15, 2017
Even back when I was in graduate school, I found the price of textbooks to be high and their quality to vary widely. Now that I have children taking college courses, I was shocked to find textbooks that cost over $200 and are still large physical objects that have to be lugged around! The high prices and lack of innovation are the result of a market structure which has become highly concentrated among just a few textbook publishers. That's why I am excited to announce that USV has led a new round of financing for Toronto-based Top Hat, which last year launched a content marketplace for higher education. Read more
Numerai
Andy Weissman – Dec 12, 2016
Today, we're excited to announce that USV is leading the Series A round of financing in Numerai’s management company. Read more
Jobbatical
Joel Monegro – Mar 2, 2016
Today we lead mostly sedentary lifestyles. Once we learned how to harvest the planet's natural resources for our survival all those thousands of years ago, we abandoned our nomadic way of life and settled down by the rivers. We learned [...] Read more
Foursquare: Building the Business
Albert Wenger – Jan 14, 2016
We first invested in Foursquare in 2009 when the company was just getting going because we believed that location was a native aspect of smartphones. Since then our conviction about the importance of location to the mobile experience has continued [...] Read more
USV Thesis 2.0
Andy Weissman – Dec 12, 2015
Union Square Ventures has always been a “thesis” driven firm. We maintain specific principles about the internet that guide our investment decisions. While other things like stage and to a lesser extent geography, also matter, our thesis or point of [...] Read more
SimScale
Albert Wenger – Dec 2, 2015
We are excited to announce our investment in Munich-based SimScale. SimScale makes complex engineering simulations, such as mechanical stress and fluid flows, available to anyone in the world with a web browser. These kinds of simulations were pioneered in the [...] Read more